Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Emesa was a city in Syria during Roman times. It had a temple to the Syrian sun god El Gebal (Aramaic), also called Elagabalus (Latin) and Heliogabalus (Greek). It was the birth-place of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known as Heliogabalus, who was a hereditary priest of the his namesake deity. It was also Roman Emperor Aurelian's headquarter during his campaign against Queen Zenobia of Palmyra. It is called Homs or Hims today. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.